The present disclosure provides compounds, which can be used, for example, as organic semiconductor materials.
Organic solar cells (OSC) can produce lightweight, flexible energy conversion devices due to their synthetic variability and low-temperature manufacturing process. Chemists have developed synthetic pathways and well-designed p-type materials; however, in terms of n-type materials, fullerene derivatives (e.g., PC60BM and PC-43M) are the dominant acceptors in organic solar cells. There are, however, several issues with fullerene derivatives (e.g., a limited absorption range which can make it difficult to tune the optical properties and/or modify or enhance absorption in the visual light range, and the cost of fullerene derivatives can limit practical use on a large scale).
Perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic acid diimide (PDI), a known n-type organic semiconductor, is a promising candidate as a non-fullerene acceptor material for use in, for example, organic solar cells. Unfortunately, certain PDIs and other electron acceptors have not fulfilled their potential in solar cells. Certain photon conversion efficiencies (PCE) are about ca. 4%, realized by using a PDI dimer-based material as the electron acceptor (Bis-PDI-T-EG).
Narrow graphene ribbons have been proposed for use in electronic applications. Certain approaches to preparing graphene nanoribbons with PDI subunits, however, have suffered from low yields and a lack of structural control over the formation of the higher oligomers.
Thus, there is a need for atomically defined graphene nanoribbons that yield a higher PCE as well as a method for reliably making these organic compounds.